Stina’s Comments (group member since Dec 11, 2016)

Stina’s comments from the Challenges from Exploding Steamboats group.

I'm still planning to read several of those, but I ended up counting Angel Falls: A Thrilling Romantic Suspense with a Touch of Paranormal for this prompt. It's not really my style, but the authors (sisters writing together under one pseudonym) have another series that sounds intriguing to me.

Cheryl wrote: "I will also include The Autobiography of Miss Jane PIttman by Lawrence J. Gaines. These three books together were my anti-racist repertoire for February and, while they were all heavy, they were al..."

I don't know why, but February was a slow reading month for me. I have several antiracist and BLM books on my TBR this year, but the only one I managed last month was Antiracist Baby.

It has been pointed out to me that Hercule Poirot was a Belgian refugee. I am planning on a re-read of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, so problem solved!

Cheryl wrote: "The friend who gifted it to me for Christmas said that with my legal and pscyh background and the number of books I read, she thought I should keep up with the controversial literature of the times..."

Then good luck with it. I'm not sure I'd have the patience. :-)

I earned a free read by reading a John Creasey novel, The Theft of Magna Carta.

I chose Brownies and Broomsticks, a cozy, witchy, foodie murder mystery set in Savannah, Georgia. It's the first in a series, and I'm looking forward to reading more.

Mary wrote: "I completed the trilogy challenge + Brandon Sanderson last year, but didn't take the Free Space. So, I have used it for the absolutely wonderful "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse" by Charli..."

Nice! I have heard good things about that one from several people.

Stina wrote: "I have started in on Theft of Magna Carta. Creasey was pretty prolific, so if you're doing GenreLand, this might be a good prompt to knock out that month."

I don't think I'd ever realized how prolific this guy was. He put out 600+ books under a whole bunch of pseudonyms before he died at the age of 63. This book might not be great literature, but it's a solid product. And for 1973, his treatment of female characters was quite decent.

I enjoyed the Salisbury setting in this one. Weird that I remember the clock but not the Magna Carta. Maybe the library was closed that day?

Stina wrote: "Does Gods of Jade and Shadow count for this? It feels like a stretch. But everything else I can find sounds really boring."

Several sources I trust agree that this does count. I read this in January and enjoyed it. It wasn't a favorite, but it was soooo much better than Signal to Noise. I expect I will give Mexican Gothic a try now that I know this author can write something I like.

Cheryl wrote: "I will likely read many of these -- I don't usually even count them in my yearly challenge. But since I had a book written by a fellow BookCrosser that I wanted to be able to provide a review on, I..."

I love the title!

Cheryl wrote: "See if you can find a collection of nature poems by a favorite poet - Frost had quite a few. Keats also. Even Dickinson. Otherwise, you might double up with the literary magazine prompt."

I'm not entirely sure I have any favorite poets who have published entire collections of poetry, and if they have, they certainly weren't nature poems. Nature poetry just isn't my thing. But I can surely manage one volume of the stuff for the other challenge.

For this one, I went with Swing, a YA audiobook. It was pretty good but not spectacular, and I still don't get where that ending came from. All I can guess is that is kinda the point.

Here's Faranae's summary post from that Habitica challenge: https://habitrpgbooklists.wordpress.c...

Well, I pretty much went with the Wikipedia definition, which does not include India at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southea... I'm planning to read The Bone Witch, or possibly The True Queen, but I seem to remember people on the original challenge reading books by US or European authors who had SEA heritage. If I didn't already own both of the books I named above, I might consider reading The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia instead, even though not all of the authors are actually from Southeast Asia, as it centers Southeast Asian heritage.

I'll see if I can find the blog post on the original challenge.

Oops, I missed this one that I didn't complete for #Victober. I will have to go back into the full challenge posts and update them.

The Victorian era was 1837-1901, and to properly qualify, the author or setting should be under Victorian rule. I'll see if I can get The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant back from whatever university library it lives in and finish what I started. But there are quite a few other options that sound interesting. Queen Victoria's own journals are now available online: https://www.royal.uk/queen-victorias-....

Cheryl wrote: "This one confused me -- I wasn't sure if it meant 6/7 books total, one on each continent, or one book that covers every continent."

There was a great deal of heated discussion along those lines that summer! And then Goodreads quit posting summer challenges altogether. I wonder if this is at least partly why. This, and the significant push-back from the bulk of the Southern Hemisphere because Goodreads called it a summer challenge during their winter.

If you want to spread this prompt out over multiple books, I certainly wouldn't fault you for it. You can get off to a decent start with Where'd You Go, Bernadette if you haven't already read that one.

Cheryl wrote: "Some magical creatures also have beaks -- I was thinking particularly of Buckbeak here."

Yes, Buckbeak was actually the inspiration for the original prompt in a Potter-themed challenge.

Cheryl wrote: "I was gifted Amreican Dirt for Christmas -- I think it qualifies"

Er...I suppose so...the prompt doesn't say it has to be an accurate or respectful depiction. To be fair, I haven't read it myself, but I'm basing my avoidance of it on what I've heard from trustworthy sources who are in the position to know. And I also don't already have a copy of it. If I did, I might read it just to see what exactly I think.

Cheryl wrote: "I started the year off reading a book at the request by my internship supervisor and waiting for Stina to post the list. I was so excited to get the list and then to see that the book -- The Body K..."

Good to know! The bestseller lists certainly have lots of great reads on them, but there's also a lot of crap that the publishers just decided they were going to market the hell out of. So it's nice to have real feedback from real readers.

Cheryl wrote: "One of my friends gave me a book by her college roommate a couple years ago that I have been meaning to read. Turns out it is on one of these lists: Educated."

It's a good book. Brutal at times, but a worthwhile read.

Technically, that would be 1801-1900. That covers a lot of literary territory. I think I'll just wait and see what pops up in my reading this year.

I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you that I counted Killer Chardonnay for this. Remember, people can have all sorts of reasons for using aliases. I have lost count of mine, and I swear, I have never murdered anybody. (Every time I say that, I find myself surprised. I have to think about it for a minute to make sure I have, in fact, never killed anybody and it just slipped my mind.)